


Slow Like Honey

by bluesyturtle



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: BAMFs, Case Fic, First Kiss, Gun Violence, Holiday Fic Exchange, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Trou Normand, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 15:00:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluesyturtle/pseuds/bluesyturtle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Secrets are shared, a case is solved, and some nice things also happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Like Honey

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach (Llwyden)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llwyden/gifts).



> _I'll let you see me, I'll covet your regard/I'll invade your demeanor, and you'll yield to me like a scent in the breeze/And you'll wonder what it is about me/It's my big secret keeping you coming/Slow like honey, heavy with mood_

“You said no one else touched it before we got here?”

Will ducks under the yellow tape and steps around the mess of blood and mangled pieces of flesh that precede the body itself: a boy probably enrolled in college missing a wallet but wearing the standard gold and blue hoodie of Emory University. The campus is a twenty minute walk west from the lot of the Presbyterian Church they’re standing in now.

Jack reads off some information one of his agents scrounged up about the kid, including his age. He’s seventeen and not a student at any university as far as the public record will show him. Jack tells him the hoodie probably belonged to his older sister, now attending graduate school in Texas. He stands from his crouch and points down the road back the way they came.

He says, “Could his killer have thought he was a college student? There’s no real profile he’s stuck to so far, but his previous three victims were all much older. Kid’s tall for his age. Maybe he saw him walking toward the campus and cornered him here.”

“Why take the wallet?” Will walks carefully around the splayed legs of the boy’s body. “Didn’t want the credit for this one; tried to play it off like a robbery gone wrong?”

Jack studies the body, looks up at the scene and the people watching them, and then nods.

“So you think it’s the same guy.”

“I don’t know yet.” Will furrows his brows and kneels at the boy’s shoulder to examine the lacerations on the victim’s forehead. It feels too scattered to fit in with the other three murders, but the difference very well may have been the point. “How’d this happen? He get pistol-whipped?”

“I’ll have Zeller look to confirm it later, but it looks like it, yeah. Even if this is the same guy, the M.O. here is drastically different from what we had with the others. We’re going to need something definitive to tie him to it.”

Will sighs and scans the area immediately around them. He eyes the civilians warily.

“I don’t know if it’s a good idea to do that here.”

Jack is unimpressed with his opinion. He says, “You asked me to bring you to the crime scene fresh; we’re here, and the scene is fresh.”

“We also have an audience, and he’s just a kid.” Will gestures at the stiff, bluish body with a dull shame burning in his chest. The blood down his chin and neck is hours old and dry. “The person we’re after right now is smart; I can’t tell yet why he’s doing this. If the local news comes down on our heads now, we’ll lose him. He’s going to be keeping close tabs on us as it is.”

“What do you want me to do then?” Jack’s shoulders deflate as he asks.

Will can tell he wants to catch this guy badly. It had been the case even before this kid, Christopher Bowen, turned up dead. Jack always wants to catch the villain. Someday he’ll have it written on his tombstone, but then, Will is one to talk.

“I’m going to look around some more; have the team process everything and then move the body.” Will starts to go and takes off his gloves. He says over his shoulder, “Tell Katz to take lots of pictures.”

It’s true that he shouldn’t try to do what he does in front of so many spectators lest he pick up another Freddie Lounds a la Georgia, but there’s a bit more to his reluctance to look this time. It’s the kid lying bruised and snuffed out on the cold street in his big sister’s varsity rugby hoodie and tattered sneakers. He hides the fact of his erratic breathing by pressing his lips together. Smaller steam clouds of carbon dioxide puff out of his nose, looking relaxed and casual. He casts his eyes eastward, up the way from which Christopher Bowen had been coming toward the church.

Toward his death, Will thinks with a shiver. It’s cold out. It’s okay if his ears are red and his hands sweat in his coat pockets where they’re balled up into fists. He walks into someone as he’s bringing his eyes back to the front. Price steadies him with a neutral expression on his face.

“Hey, Will,” he calls his name uncertainly with a healthy amount of concern. “You all right?”

He struggles, but he finds his breath and replies, “Yes.”

Price is unconvinced but not judgmentally so. He points back toward the church over his shoulder.

“I overheard Beverly on the phone with Metcalf. Atlanta State Police wants to fight us on this one for jurisdiction. Tensions get pretty high when you’re working with kids.”

Will watches him, feeling slightly manic with the dwindling desire to run. He squints, reading an ulterior meaning in Price’s words that wasn’t subtle and wasn’t meant to be taken for anything more or less than face value. Price pats him on the arm and doesn’t smile, reassuring enough in that his words and his actions are genuine.

“The minister’s inside. He’s the one who found the body. He’d probably answer whatever questions you have.”

“Thanks, Price.”

“Yeah.”

Will walks briskly to the back entrance of the church and lets himself in. More of Jack’s agents have swarmed the building and commandeered it for a makeshift headquarters. The aforementioned minister doesn’t mind. Will finds him sitting alone in one of the front pews by the altar. His hands are clasped in his lap, his face is calm, and his back is straight. Will catches his attention before sitting down.

“Reverend.”

“Doctor, please, in case you come seeking spiritual advisement.” He extends his hand to Will, a weary but well-meaning polite gesture. “Dr. Serafin.”

“Will Graham,” he gives the man his name as their hands separate. “You were the one who found the body?”

“Yes, early this morning, before the sun came up. I get here early to cater to our more nocturnal wayfarers. The boy was already cold when I got to him.” He shakes his head, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “I called the proper authorities. Apparently _they_ called in the whole cavalry.”

The Reverend Doctor speaks in a low register anyway, but paired with the accent and the faint disdain with which he speaks of the FBI, his words positively grumble.

“Are you aware of the serial killings that have occurred these past few weeks, doctor?”

“I’m aware. I doubt the person who killed Albert Cloutier, Pamela Niequist, and Etienne Paquet killed this boy.”

“Why is that?”

Will observes the man’s nails turning white where they bite into his hands. Dr. Serafin swallows compulsively.

“Because what would be the _point?_ Killing a young boy like that, with his whole life ahead of him; _why?_ ”

His voice breaks with an emotion that stings Will right at the back of his throat and deep behind his sternum.

“Christopher was _good._ He was decent.” His nostrils flare angrily. Hoarsely, he says, “Not like those other three.”

“What can you tell me about them?” Will monitors his voice, trying not to sound too insistent or too sympathetic. If he even puts on airs of caring about this man’s pain he really will care. He’ll care too much, and he won’t be able to focus on anything else. Christopher Bowen doesn’t need him in that capacity.

“Albert Cloutier was a skirt chaser; hung around high schools gawking at teenage girls. Pamela Niequist abused drugs, and Etienne Paquet was a drunken gambler. Take your pick of what they’d done to hurt other people. Christopher’s one fault may have been his decision not to continue his education, but he had another year left to explore his options and change his mind.”

“Did you know any of the other three personally?”

“Pamela Niequist I met several times this year. I think she was trying to embrace the faith, but it never stuck. Her visits were infrequent to say the least.” He nods, gathering some of his composure back and pushing his shoulders back to correct his slouched posture. “Cloutier I have only heard of from some of the parents who attend church here with their daughters. They were relieved to see him extracted from their lives, though I wouldn’t have wished his demise on my worst enemy.”

“And Etienne Paquet?”

“Members of our congregation have been down the same road as Etienne; they’ve struggled with addiction and alcoholism just like he did. Many of them knew him from their past exploits. From the sound of it he was selfish and a degenerate.” He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t say such cruel things about the dead, but clemency won’t tell you what sort of people they were.”

Will studies him for a moment in contemplation before Dr. Serafin turns to return a steady glance.

“We accept all types of people here, Mr. Graham. I love them and forgive them all as Christ would have wanted, but whoever did this—” he falters, “to Christopher.”

“We’ll find the person responsible and bring him to justice.”

The man appears to believe him, though nothing about his solemn expression changes. He nods once, and Will knows he accepts what Will has told him as the truth.

“Thank you.”

Will gives him his hand and then rises to go. He lingers only a moment longer than he has to, anticipating that the reverend will call him back.

“Are you a spiritual man, Mr. Graham?”

“No, sir, I’m not.”

“May I ask why?”

Will stiffens. He hadn’t expected this particular line of questioning, though perhaps he should have. He remembers a conversation he had once with Hannibal about God killing people in Texas. Hannibal had called blind wrath a vehicle for power.

“God made me a certain way,” he hedges.

“He makes all of us to be a certain way,” the Reverend Doctor retorts conversationally, gently. “He made you the way you are because no one else could have done it.”

“What about the person who killed Christopher Bowen?”

His teeth click together, but Dr. Serafin’s resolve remains unbroken, undisrupted.

“I would not presume to know God’s will, Mr. Graham. I don’t know why he made you the way he did or what that means, and I don’t know why Christopher had to die. There are some things we aren’t meant to know.”

Miriam Lass comes to mind, unbidden.

Will licks his lips, a hysterical laugh fighting to escape him. He bites his cheek so as to keep quiet and nods once.

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Whoever did this won’t get away with it,” he promises.

He stands where he is and waits for the Reverend Doctor to nod before he turns and stops dead in his tracks again. Up by the altar with his hand in his pockets stands Hannibal. His back is to Will, but there’s no mistaking the man’s identity. The straight line of his shoulders and the perfect styling of his hair is a dead giveaway even from behind. Will approaches him, looking around uncertainly for any sign of Jack or Beverly hanging around.

“Dr. Lecter,” Will announces the name objectively as he walks up on him. He angles his head slightly to the side but doesn’t turn to greet him or bring his eyes away from the sculpture of Christ poised before the wall several feet back from the pristine white altar.

“Hello, Will.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Consulting,” Hannibal answers in a voice that suggests he isn’t being as vague as he sounds. Will scrutinizes him, a faint hostility rising up in the center of his spine and shooting up into his chest.

“Not on the case,” Will clarifies.

Hannibal looks at him, giving nothing away.

“No, Will.”

He manages not to lash out angrily the way he would like to and instead calmly asks why.

“Jack is concerned.”

 _“Why?”_ Will crosses his arms in front of his chest, determined to get some kind of definitive answer.

“We can discuss it later, when you aren’t needed here.”

Will hears that a command is being issued, and he doesn’t like it.

“I asked you a simple question; you can’t give me a simple _answer?_ ”

It’s strange that he’s upset to see Hannibal. At first it was a relief to see someone he trusted and who trusted him back. He had grown agitated only when he realized it was at Jack’s behest because that meant that Jack _didn’t_ trust him.

Firmly, Hannibal says, “It wasn’t my intention to distract you from your work.”

Will opens his mouth and then snaps it shut before he can argue against a perfectly reasonable point. He scowls openly at Hannibal, a feeling much deeper than hinted hostility burning up in him. He thinks back on the cases they’ve worked since they got in to Georgia. The most recent victim, Etienne Paquet, had been dead three days when they got the call to come down and look. Will hadn’t misbehaved since they’d been here. At least, he didn’t think he had.

The fire wanes as he clears his head.

He sighs, resigned. “What did I do?”

“Nothing, Will.”

“Then _why_ did Jack call you here?”

Hannibal turns to take in their surroundings before promptly turning to the door and walking outside. Will tips his head back, annoyed, and follows.

He goes down to the sidewalk on the far side of the church. Most of the rubberneckers from earlier have dissipated what with the body having been removed by now, but the few that remain linger further down the street where they can see into the parking lot. Hannibal stands with his eyes resolutely on the sky.

“You lived here when you were sixteen.”

Will blinks, heart stuttering in his chest.

With forced confidence, he says, “I lived a lot of places growing up.”

“You were _arrested_ here.” Hannibal lowers his chin as he turns to look down the road in the direction of Emory University. “The records were expunged, but of course, Jack is a man of many resources and in a position to know any and all incriminating facts of your previous life before you came to work for him. He called me because he worried this place might still be a trigger after all these years.”

Will avoids looking at Hannibal, enraged for different reasons now. The anger turns cold and sharp inside him and pinches his airway when he tries to breathe.

“Are you going to ask me about it?”

“No.”

“Did Jack already tell you what I did?”

“He attempted to raise the matter with me, but no, he did not.”

Will focuses on breathing evenly and counts the cars that drive by further down the road where the police haven’t blocked off traffic.

Tonelessly, Will murmurs, “I suppose I should thank you then.”

“I would prefer it if you didn’t.” Hannibal moves in his peripheral vision until he is perfectly in front of Will. “I made the trip so that Jack would not attempt to _handle_ you. The reason he saw fit to call me at all displeases me as much as it does you.”

“Oh, really.”

“A man’s past is his own, Will.”

Will flicks his gaze to Hannibal and studies him for a few seconds around the turbulence trying to coax him into averting his eyes. He does drop the staring act but only once he’s satisfied that Hannibal means what he says. Grateful enough with his findings, Will’s shoulders sag slightly. He changes the subject so he won’t have to apologize for reacting so poorly.

“What do you think about all this?”

“It is a tragedy to see a young man slain so senselessly.” Hannibal pushes his hands back into his pockets. “Although I am not up-to-date on this case, it seems to me that Christopher Bowen’s death is something of an anomaly.”

“What makes you say that?”

“The bodies were moved at every other scene. None were left in public this way.”

“We think the killer might have seen that Bowen was just a kid and then tried to foist the murder off as someone else’s work. He was wearing a hoodie from Emory University, so it’s possible he could’ve thought he was older when he went after him.”

“Will,” Jack calls from behind them before Hannibal can respond. They both turn to receive Jack as he runs over. “Oh, Dr. Lecter, you’re here. Good.” He looks at Will. “Beverly found skin under Bowen’s fingernails. They’ll run it at the lab. If we get a hit, we can arrest the guy tonight.”

“If it’s the same guy.”

“Whoever killed Bowen,” Jack corrects himself. “We’ll get him. We’re heading back to the station now.”

Will nods and watches Jack go. He figures that’s a cue for them to follow, so he and Hannibal head that way, too. Hannibal came in his own car, so Will opts to ride with him and lets Beverly go with Jack instead of carpooling with Zeller and Price. They impressively feign stricken betrayal at her choice. Will goes quietly with Hannibal to his car, but he watches the exchange with a distant, forlorn feeling he became well-acquainted with as a teenager. Hannibal calls his name gently from over the roof of the car, and slides into his seat, dazed.

“Must be riveting for you,” Will muses sarcastically from one side of his mouth. His voice is softer than he would like for it to be. “Coming out and seeing how the other half lives.”

Hannibal doesn’t answer immediately, so Will studies him in the silence. He does so blankly and devoid of purpose. To be able to look without being reciprocally dissected in turn is something of a relief. Hannibal doesn’t allow him the luxury for long, naturally.

“Would you consider yourself a part of this other half, as you call it?”

Brown eyes, the brightest shade just constituting or just short of hazel, pin him as the car slows to a stop for a red light at an intersection. Will holds the gaze for as long as Hannibal does, leisurely familiar with the exchange since Hannibal’s performance in the ambulance with Silvestri. Some of the steel in Hannibal’s guarded expression dissolves and alerts Will to its presence the exact second it flickers away. He can’t name what it was that he only just missed, but it is replaced now with an open, curious docility that given the context makes no sense to Will.

Discombobulated, he answers, “Why wouldn’t I?”

“You are an outsider looking in on their interaction: an observer, not a participant.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

Hannibal looks at him as he drives, probably surprised Will doesn’t try to argue against him.

“It separates you from them, even if you would like for it not to.”

“You would know, I guess.”

They pull into the police station, and Hannibal doesn’t acknowledge Will’s jab. He just gets out of the car and waits to walk with Will into the building. Jack and the others are already there, so they jump right into the case. Will takes the seat immediately adjacent to Hannibal so as not to seem childish and flips through his copy of the updated case file.

Will skims through the evidence he is already familiar with and goes back to the first page where the headcount of possible suspects has increased by one. Hannibal beats him to the question, though he doesn’t phrase it as such. Apparently he is familiar enough with the case to notice even the small discrepancies. Or, perhaps the list of five names growing in number merely stood out to him.

“You have another suspect.”

“Dalton Mahoney,” Jack explains. “He works at the shipyard where the first body was found, and he knew the third victim.”

“What about the second victim?” Will turns a few pages until he finds the one he wants with the familiar photograph of a frowning woman’s mug shot and clears his throat. “Pamela Niequist, right? You can’t connect her to him at all?”

“Our guy, whoever he is, doesn’t favor men or women when he kills; he doesn’t distinguish across age or ethnicity either. Niequist is the only one so far with any kind of criminal record to her name. That’s the only thing that definitively sets her apart from the rest.”

He locates the DUI arrest from three years ago to which Jack is referring. Will rubs at his beard, disconcerted. He hums softly to himself trying to shut out the ambience of the conference room. Only a few of Jack’s more able agents flit about, so the distractions are few, but he can’t shut them out completely. He recalls the Reverend Doctor’s words about the other two victims and about Christopher Bowen.

“Dr. Serafin hinted that they were all miscreant in different ways. Cloutier and Paquet don’t have criminal records, but they were on the community’s radar even if they hadn’t been noticed by local police.”

“So we could be looking at a vigilante,” Jack concludes.

“I guess it’s as likely as anything else. Is there any chance she could’ve met anyone on our suspects list in prison?”

Jack shakes his head and says, “Every one of them so far is male.”

“Perhaps a rehabilitation facility of some sort?”

Will turns to look at Hannibal and frowns at the empty seat to his left. He leans back in his chair a ways to see Hannibal assessing the board anew. Will asks without turning around, “What about it, Jack?”

He hears the man digging around through stacks of papers and halfway registers the command issued to the rest of the agents in the room. Hannibal shoots Jack a leveled glance right over Will’s head and then carries right on analyzing the board as if it’s the most interesting object in the room. Will frowns, bewildered and hopelessly distracted by his confusion. It isn’t characteristic of him to feel _neglected_ in the middle of a case. It isn’t even mildly appropriate for his mind to wander the way of personal affairs that, strangely, don’t feel linked to him at all.

Jack calls Will’s name as he begins to drift. He thinks it probably looks to Jack like he’s tired or beleaguered. He discreetly stretches his shoulder to help bolster that image of himself that he knows can be believable in any context similar to this one.

“Mahoney was there twice in the same year Pamela Niequist sought court-mandated treatment. Shepherd Center’s ten minutes out from his apartment here in town. Both times he went in of his own volition. No priors and no warrants out for his arrest anywhere.”

Somebody walks hurriedly into the room, heels tapping dully on the tile.

“Too many holes for a warrant,” Beverly says breathlessly. “I’ll do you one better.”

Will and Hannibal both turn to see what she has with her. It turns out to be several high resolution photos of evidence from the second crime scene; Will recognizes it from the deep purple silk scrunched up and stained maroon with dried blood. Pamela Niequist wore it the night she was murdered. Katz spreads the photos out on the table and points to the one nearest to Jack.

“When you gave me Mahoney’s name I went back and looked at the second victim just to see if anything new would come up. We were looking at his financials and couldn’t find anything out of the ordinary. The payment for his repeat stints in rehab came out of his brother’s pocket. Turns out the elder Mahoney monitored his brother’s comings and goings pretty strictly. His visitor’s badge turned up in the registry like clockwork every Monday and Friday, even after his brother checked himself out the first time.”

Will looks at the photo she brought of Corwin Mahoney. “Could he have met the other two victims from his brother?”

Katz rotates the picture so Will can see it better as Jack stalks to a far corner of the room to talk to someone working on a laptop. Katz says to Will, “If he knew them at all, the only way to find out for sure is to ask him directly because his money isn’t talking.”

“Maybe it is,” Will says uncertainly, looking through Dalton Mahoney’s finances again and focusing on the periodical trips to rehab. “Do the other two victims have any affiliation with this rehab clinic; not just patients but family and friends of patients, staff members?”

“We’ll run it.” Katz shrugs and heads back out the way she came.

Jack moseys over, ruffled. He asks gruffly, “What’d I miss?”

“Katz is checking the brother.”

“It’s thin, Will. Even if he did hang around the rehab clinic when his brother wasn’t there, we can’t charge him for loitering. Who’s to say he won’t lie about having ever met Pamela Niequist or the others?”

As if sensing that they might continue debating the point for a while, Hannibal turns to speak and halt the discussion before it takes off: “What does Corwin Mahoney do for a living?”

“He’s a federal prosecutor.” Jack shrugs. “Even if we can tie him to the other victims, it’s not like a lawyer with connections is really enough to build a case against him, especially if these people were what the reverend said they were.”

Hannibal doesn’t relent. He rests his forearms on the table and laces his fingers together. 

“A federal prosecutor with an addict for a brother; it can’t be good for his reputation.”

Will turns to look at him and asks, “You think he’d implicate his brother to get him locked up? For what purpose, damage control?”

“I think the multiple attempts at rehabilitation were an attempt at damage control.” He returns Will’s stare this time around. Will’s neck flushes under the scrutiny. “Why else would he continue to frequent the center even after his brother left? His professional schedule would be congested enough without the added strain of being somewhere he didn’t need to be.”

Will opens his mouth to refute the point, but the words don’t come. He watches Hannibal instead, a slow but vivid sense of alarm creeping up on him at Hannibal’s impatience. It’s unlike him. Jack saves him from his silence, though Hannibal has detected already that he’s raised a red flag somehow. Jack fails to notice Hannibal quietly withdrawing into himself even as the sight, the reality of it, unnerves Will.

“We don’t have enough to bring either of them in, but we can still pay them each a visit. Beverly will call when she has something on the samples from the scene. I’ll take Bowman and have a chat with Dalton. You and Dr. Lecter take Corwin.” He checks with Hannibal almost as an afterthought. “Is that agreeable?”

Hannibal nods, but he doesn’t speak. Will watches Jack leave the room and waits with his hands clenching into fists and rolling out on his thighs, clenching and rolling out, clenching and rolling out.

It occurs to him they’ve left some words between here and the parking lot unsaid.

“Shall we go then?”

Will says, “Yeah.”

They walk out to the rented Ford Will left sitting in the parking lot that morning and takes the wheel. He squeezes it a few times before backing out of the spot and pulling out onto the street. He shoots a few glances Hannibal’s way and bites down on his cheek.

“Were you all right back there?”

Hannibal looks at his phone and types the address Jack texted him into the phone’s GPS. Will tracks the action sparingly, his attention primarily on the road before him. Hannibal doesn’t speak to him for six blocks, so Will tries again.

“This isn’t like you, shutting down like this. If you didn’t want to be here, you shouldn’t have let Jack guilt you into coming.”

“I’ve told you already why my services were requested. While Jack is a man of many talents, he doesn’t have the power to coerce me into being anywhere I wish not to be.”

It sounds like a challenge to Will’s ears. He takes it as such.

“What, are you mocking me? Jack doesn’t make me do anything, doctor.” He spits the formal address disdainfully as if it were a slur, and he means it as such. “I’m here to help people, and if that’s _offensive_ to you, then maybe you should reevaluate your decision to be a part of it.”

“I do help people; you _stop_ them, or have you lost sight of the gray line between the two?”

“There is no gray line.” Will swerves out of his lane and pulls over beside a curb in the middle of a bustling city street. A few cars honk at him as they go, but he keeps his vision honed in on Hannibal. “If you help someone when they’re in pain, you stop them from hurting themselves or other people; if you help someone end an unhealthy relationship, you stop another person from hurting them.” He catches himself shouting and dials it back, anger deflated in the heat of the moment. “What the hell is going on with you?”

Hannibal licks his lips and gazes emptily out the windshield. He shakes his head slightly and laughs, a defeated, broken sound.

“You argue that if I were to stop you from pursuing an aberrant behavior or relationship, the act would equate, ultimately, with helping you.” He shifts in his seat and locks eyes with Will, and immediately, Will alerts to his own mistake. “I suppose it’s true, then, that doctors make the worst patients.”

Will swallows.

“I’m not a doctor.”

“You evaluate physical evidence, you deduce the cause of the damage, and you diagnose from there what illness is to blame. Aren’t you every bit as much a physician in your line of work as I am in mine?”

His heart thumps unevenly behind his sternum, wildly distraught and determined to signal as much to Hannibal through Will’s skin and his clothes. It tries to transcend the boundary of oxygen between them that is charged with a kindred difference Will hesitates to name. It denies subtlety much in the same manner as static. It sparks with about as much tangibility except it can’t be seen but only experienced.

_You are an outsider looking in on their interaction: an observer, not a participant. It separates you from them, even if you would like for it not to._

_You would know, I guess._

Calmly, Will asks, “Are you upset about what I said earlier? Is that what this is about?”

Hannibal watches him, gaze refined and searching as they cut through Will’s preliminary defenses and plow through his forts. He can feel it happening, and too shocked to react any other way, Will faces the front again and closes his eyes, afraid of what Hannibal may have seen already. There’s no way to really ask what the hell just happened or if Hannibal did it on purpose, so he just keeps his eyes closed and assures himself that it was probably an accident. He’s sure he was just projecting; he’s sure he was just thinking too closely to the case.

He even convinces himself that it’s his fault it happened, whatever it was that happened.

Rendered into a quieter version of himself and returning to a safer point in the conversation, he says, “I have to do this.”

Hannibal doesn’t let him off so easily.

“You don’t.”

He leans back against the headrest before opening his eyes again. The afternoon has fallen sneakily into early evening all around them. The sky is tinged a pale teal directly above the manmade horizon of business establishments. He doesn’t want to fight. He doesn’t want any more of his secrets coming loose.

“Fine, I don’t.”

Hannibal sighs, irritated. “Don’t be mundane, Will.”

Will looks at him, affronted and perhaps more shocked than the occasion fairly deserves. Managing not to stammer, he says, firmly, “We’re in the middle of a homicide investigation. Four people are dead, in case you forgot. Sorry if I’m a little too distracted to argue with you about my life choices.”

He starts the car again and drives to Corwin Mahoney’s home twenty minutes out from Emory University. The last time he went to question a suspect at home with Hannibal the situation required him to use deadly force. An entire family had been destroyed, and Abigail had nearly died in his hands. She would have if Hannibal hadn’t been there. She would have been lost that day, and with her death, Nick Boyle could have lived.

A life for a life, he supposes the old adage goes.

“This time will be better than last time,” Hannibal tells him, clearly reading his mind as he switches off the engine.

There’s actually no way for Hannibal to know what will happen when they get out of the car. Will takes the freely given comfort with a grain of salt.

“I assaulted a teacher,” he blurts out, the confession given out of spontaneity and capricious honesty. “It’s why I was arrested and why we had to move. The charges were dropped, but I was still expelled from the school, and my dad didn’t like the attention it earned us. We moved around a lot anyway, so it wasn’t like it was hard, picking up and leaving.”

Hannibal assesses him with a level, clinical gaze.

“But it was that time.”

“Yes,” Will concedes without hesitation.

“Why?”

“Because I…” He pauses and remembers where they are. The immediacy of the pain gripping his heart diminishes. It tucks away into that secret place hidden away deep in the core of him. He blinks. “It doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. Jack has nothing to worry about.”

“It only troubles me that he would have you out here even as he has made it so clear that he doesn’t trust you to be unsupervised.”

“Leave it alone.” He flinches at his tone and pulls back. “Please.”

“Yes, Will, of course.”

Will sighs and rubs his forehead with the back of his hand. He looks up the driveway that will take them to Corwin Mahoney’s door and glances at Hannibal’s forehead.

“Are you ready to go up?”

Hannibal gives him an answer in the affirmative, and they go. His phone buzzes in his pocket as he’s slamming the door shut. It’s a text from Beverly. He reads it quickly and then summarizes for Hannibal.

“The skin under Bowen’s nails matched Dalton Mahoney’s DNA. So did some of the blood in his mouth.”

“You would still prefer to speak to his brother.”

“He might like to hear what we have to say,” he reasons more casually than he feels. “Besides, I thought you liked him for this.”

“With the evidence now pointing definitively toward his brother, we have virtually nothing to use against him. If he is a competent lawyer, he will refuse outright to speak to us. I certainly would if you were investigating me for such heinous crimes with so little evidence.”

“Let’s hope he isn’t as meticulous as you then.”

“Will.”

Hannibal stops him before he can ring the bell below Corwin Mahoney’s mailbox. His fingers are warm and firm on his elbow.

“Ask him only information pertaining to his brother. If he suspects we are here to interrogate him, he will throw us out.”

Will nods and rings the bell. A few moments of silence tick by, followed by some shuffling and eventually a rattle of locks coming undone. Corwin Mahoney, all six feet and four inches of the man, opens the door, radiating a certain jauntiness Will would like to knock him out of. He suspects that that particular desire comes from a certain alpha male mentality that Mahoney definitely possesses and exudes.

He snaps himself out of the haze and introduces himself and Hannibal. Corwin Mahoney lets them into his house when Will asks if they can talk inside.

“What’s this about?”

He sits down in an armchair and leaves the couch for his guests. Hannibal takes the middle seat. Will goes for the one directly across from Mahoney, which, conveniently, also happens to be the closest seat in the den to the front door. Corwin Mahoney looks expectantly from Will to Hannibal and then back.

“Your brother, actually; we found evidence tying him to a murder that took place last night.”

“Not _Christopher Bowen’s?_ ” He looks to be genuinely dismayed at the thought. “What evidence?”

“His skin was under the victim’s nails; there was blood in the victim’s mouth, too. Our M.E. says Bowen took a nice chunk out of his assailant, probably his hand or arm, maybe even his throat. We have other agents booking him now.”

“Oh, hell, Dalton. Damn it, I need to call him.” He stands to his feet. “I need to call him.”

“We have a few more questions for you before you do that.”

Corwin pauses uncertainly. A curious ripple interrupts the constant pulse of his nearly aggressive energy. Will shivers at the precision of its undoing and frowns around the fluctuating heat in the atmosphere as Corwin bends to his request and sits back down.

Hot, he feels hot; right under his collar and in his fingertips and behind the ears.

It’s red, almost, the heat of it.

The corners of his vision pulse with it infrequently. Hannibal nudges his side discreetly with his elbow. Will hears him speaking to Corwin as he comes back into himself.

“We are interested in the other murders that have taken place in the past month: those of Albert Cloutier, Pamela Niequist, and Etienne Paquet. We have reason to believe he may have been involved.”

“What do you need from me if he’s already in custody?”

Will clears his throat. The constant pressure of Hannibal’s elbow pressing lightly into his ribs eases but doesn’t lift off completely.

He says, “For the murder of Christopher Bowen only. We just have a few questions about the time he spent in rehab where he met one of the victims, a Pamela Niequist?” He flashes a picture of the woman on his phone, a better one where she’s smiling.

“She looks vaguely familiar, I guess? Dalton’s been to rehab so many times now; he never takes it seriously. I go to see him sometimes, and he’s not there.” Dismissively, he adds, “Maybe I saw her there one of the times I went to visit him.”

Will asks a few more questions, trying to get what he needs from the man without being too directly accusatory in the process. His phone buzzes in his pocket. His hand reaches for the device automatically, and before he can excuse himself, Corwin Mahoney offers to get them something to drink. Will declines as does Hannibal; Mahoney flits into the kitchen to get something for himself. The text on Will’s phone says Dalton confessed to killing Christopher Bowen.

Something clatters softly in the next room, a muted sound.

Will is up on his feet and in the large glistening kitchen before he can read the rest of the message. He notes the sheer curtains whipping around the opened window and the screen neatly sliced along two edges.

“Damn it.”

He looks at the last few sentences of Jack’s text. Hannibal wanders into the kitchen and halts mid-stride at the look on Will’s face, whatever type of look it is.

“Dalton Mahoney just flipped on his brother; says he was framed for the other three murders.”

“He can prove as much?”

“They’re grilling him now,” Will huffs dismissively.

Hannibal averts his eyes to the screen. Will looks out the window, too. His first instinct had been to dive blindly out the window right after the guy, but he hadn’t seen any trace of him on the street or in the yard. The car hadn’t been moved from the driveway either. He leans a ways over the counter and peers straight down at something just beneath the window pane.

“Can you tell what that is?”

Hannibal leans up closer to the window as Will eases back a ways to accommodate for him. His shoulder brushes Will’s chest, a warm, gentle type of touch. He watches Hannibal’s head tilt to one side curiously before he steps quickly away from the window and gets his back to the counter. He forces Will down into a controlled crash on the tile as three successive shots ring out just over his head and pierce through the loosened screen. Will goes for his gun out of instinct and manages to wound Mahoney’s leg before the man runs behind the wall and noisily escapes out the front door.

“Jesus Christ.”

Will untangles his leg from Hannibal’s where they wove together in the midst of their fall. He starts to stand and stops at the sight of blood on the floor. His heart sinks when he checks himself briefly for an entrance or exit wound and doesn’t find one.

“Oh, my God, Hannibal.”

Tires shriek outside. Will turns Hannibal on his side, relieved at the sight of the doctor curling in on himself and clutching at his shoulder.

“I’m fine,” he grits out, praises above. “You should go after him before he gets away.”

Will shakes his head calmly and fires off a quick text to Jack explaining what’s happened. Maybe he should call and elucidate that way, but it would take too much of his attention away from Hannibal.

“Let him run. There’s no way he’ll get away with this.” He sinks back onto his heels and helps Hannibal sit up. Gingerly, so gingerly, he peels off Hannibal’s coat so he can better assess the damage. 

He winces at the profusely bleeding flesh wound. It reaches up from beneath the bloody tear of Hannibal’s tattered jacket and shirt like an angry, wet mouth of blood and uprooted skin. Will procures a clean dish towel from one of Mahoney’s kitchen drawers and presses it to Hannibal’s bleeding shoulder. 

A soft, defiant resignation builds in him just beneath his jaw somewhere deep in his throat. Voice low, Will murmurs, “Jack can chase him if he wants.”

Hannibal sighs softly and adds more pressure to the makeshift bandage until he is satisfied. He leans his back against the cabinets and breathes around closed eyes and slightly parted lips. His chest expands, rises, and falls with breath. Will hums around his satisfaction at the fact of Hannibal sitting beside him alive and bleeding with it. Words form on his tongue before he can make them stop.

“You saved my life.”

“I reacted.”

“If you hadn’t…”

“But I did, Will.” Hannibal’s eyes drift open. He looks murky, the after effects of a quick epinephrine plunge settling into him and claiming him for a victim. “You are saved.”

He says it definitively, as if he means to communicate so much more than a simple effect of reflex. His eyes slip closed again as he breathes a comforting rhythm around the silence of the bloody kitchen. A cold evening breeze wisps in through the window, darkness having fallen outside.

Will looks up over his shoulder at the sabotaged screen and back at Hannibal.

“What was it that he dropped out the window?”

Hannibal inhales deeply through his mouth and answers, “An entire ham.”

A beat ticks by before Will thinks about the absurdity of it. Hannibal cracks an eye open to peek at Will with a slight smirk tugging on the corner of his lips.

Perhaps it’s just that ridiculous or perhaps Will is still frightened at the prospect of losing Hannibal so abruptly, but laughter stirs a pleasant weight in his chest and coaxes warmth down his spine where there had been an oppressive chill in its place. Hannibal chuckles, too, and pretends with Will that the stubborn tears creeping passed Will’s eyelashes and wetting his fingers are from laughing too hard.

They sit for a while in self-imposed silence until the uneven racing in Will’s chest demands that he move or speak or any combination of the two. He takes a shallow, stuttering breath.

“I had a girlfriend here—when we left, I mean. That’s why it was difficult.”

Hannibal stares at him, curious. A light layer of sweat has broken out over his forehead that worries Will immensely. His hand itches to make the hurt better, to somehow heal Hannibal instantly just by righting his appearance. He ends up brushing his hair out of his eyes with a shaking hand and an even more erratic heartbeat clamoring up his throat and trying to jump out of his body. Hannibal doesn’t move into or away from Will’s hand on his forehead pushing his sweat-soaked hair back, though his breathing sounds more labored than it did previously.

“Did you love her?”

Will blinks back the hot sting of tears at the backs of his eyes, afraid to think of love, injury, and goodbyes while Hannibal is sitting here beside him bleeding and in pain. He bites the inside of his lip and nods jerkily.

“Yeah,” he says on a short exhale. For the next few moments he doesn’t breathe. He keeps his eyes on the gunshot wound marring Hannibal’s shoulder. “Yeah, I loved her.”

He hears sirens coming from several streets away.

They resolve not to speak in the time that it takes for the vehicle to make its way to them. A paramedic crouches at Hannibal’s side and takes his blood pressure. Not a minute later Jack strides in, passionate for one reason or another. Will is tired, so he chooses to believe he’s upset about Hannibal’s injury.

“You nicked him,” he says to Will in reference to Corwin Mahoney.

He leads Will away from Hannibal’s side into the hallway so the paramedic can tend to him more efficiently. Will scans up and down the hallway and tracks the sloping, inconsistent line of blood from the doorway to the kitchen, through the den, and out the front door.

Numbly, he says yes.

“Above the knee; I doubt he’ll be able to drive for very long.”

“Did you see which way he went?”

“I heard him speeding off in that direction, away from us.”

Will gestures with his hands vaguely. He feels tired, too. Jack is, oddly, sympathetic.

It’s not as if Will thinks Jack is an unfeeling machine. He knows Jack is a compassionate person, when the occasion calls for it. Will is just surprised every time Jack treats _him_ as if he isn’t an unfeeling machine—as if he possesses so much acuity for empathy but feels nothing else apart from what he tells Jack. It’s laughable sometimes how well Jack knows him since he hardly knows him at all.

He supposes Jack probably thinks Will _aims_ to be an unfeeling machine, and well, that wouldn’t be too far from the truth. Jack might even feel safer thinking Will can always distance himself when he makes up his mind to do so. Will won’t steal that peace of mind from him if that’s the case.

“What did he say to you before he took off?”

“Nothing much,” Will mumbles, perking up at the sight of a stretched being brought in. “He evaded my questions about Pamela Niequist. I don’t know if I was even getting anywhere with him, but he must have known his brother had figured him out. Did Dalton tell you why he killed the Bowen kid?”

There are three paramedics wheeling Hannibal out with an oxygen mask strapped over his face. Will’s heart leaps and pounds desperately in his chest. His teeth click together in his mouth, back molars straining to allow for the ferocious set of his jaw.

Trying not to let the distraction affect him as much as it has Will, Jack tells him, “He said he was just at the church to see the reverend, but he hadn’t been by to unlock the doors yet. Bowen was just walking by, saw him, and tried to calm the guy down. There was an altercation; Mahoney wounded him, fatally, and took off. Now he’s claiming his brother was trying to frame him for the other three murders to get him locked up, and it looks like you’ve just confirmed his theory.”

“Yeah, at a price. Hannibal’s _shot_. Mahoney could have killed us both.”

Will avoids stepping in blood as he crosses the threshold and walks out into the chilled air. Hannibal is reclined in the opened backend of the ambulance. The lights are still going on the roof, though the siren has stopped blaring, thankfully. A few more cars have since pulled up around the house. Jack works on crowd control, beginning with the neighbors gawking from the sidewalk, concerned.

He knows he can count on Jack to debrief him later, so he doesn’t worry about whether they can corroborate his story or whether anyone saw Corwin Mahoney fleeing the scene. For now he must see to Hannibal. He fights slightly with the oxygen mask when he sees Will, but at the insistence of the paramedic at his side, he lets his hand fall away. A distinct petulance underlies Hannibal’s obedience, which earns him a soft smile from Will.

They agree to let Will ride with them to the hospital where they will remove the bullets—fucking _hollow points_ , Will was going to _murder_ Corwin Mahoney if given the chance—and dose him with something for the pain. Will hopes they’ll give Hannibal morphine, mostly because he doesn’t want Hannibal to be in pain if he doesn’t have to be.

There is, of course, a smaller, more devious part of him that just wants to bear witness to the immaculate Dr. Lecter hopelessly doped up on pain medication. He would take this admission with him to the grave.

It turns out they do give Hannibal morphine and quite a bit of it. Will isn’t exactly disappointed at the results, though Hannibal isn’t the type to behave in any sort of horribly embarrassing manner while under the influence. Predominantly, he just smiles a lot. It takes Will a good five minutes to get used to it, to the relaxed, open smile on Hannibal’s face as he walks into his chilly hospital room.

Made shy at the sight of Hannibal’s extreme vulnerability and mortality, he asks, quietly, “Do you feel okay?”

Hannibal, because he must, _must_ make everything so difficult, ignores the question.

Instead, he muses, around a thick tongue, “They’ve given me something.”

He blinks languidly, staring at Will outright yet appearing to look right through him.

Will fights the shiver trying to ripple in between his shoulders and down his back. It tingles in his spine deliciously, like an itch only just nudged on the very surface but not relieved entirely. He looks down at his hands and sits unceremoniously in the chair beside Hannibal’s bed. His knee knocks the smooth, shiny frame and bounces agitatedly with his heel.

He stretches his arm just a ways over the edge of the bed to splay his fingers across Will’s knee. The brush of his fingertips is just the slightest suggestion of weight and sensation. Will lets his lip fall free from between his teeth and looks up at Hannibal. Something inside him comes frantically unhinged the longer Hannibal stares at his hand on Will’s knee. Their eyes meet, and Hannibal opens his mouth as if to speak but doesn’t and makes no effort to for several long, stilted moments. Changing his mind against further attempts to form sentences, and visibly frowning at his inability to coherently articulate his thoughts, Hannibal licks his lips and drops his gaze to Will’s mouth.

And that, fortunately for the two of them, Will understands immediately.

It takes willpower and courage he worries he doesn’t have to scoot toward the edge of his chair and lean in. He stretches himself out over Hannibal and finds his eyes for a three-count before swallowing thickly, pinching his eyes shut, and sealing in what neither of them could say.

_Could have killed us both._

Hannibal makes a soft sound against his lips, just the slightest buzz of a vibration briefly inspiring their lips to separate. Will’s breath steals out of him in an inaudible sigh that he can feel warming across Hannibal’s cheeks and down his nose where their faces create canyons and valleys for the purpose of harvesting every exhale and every hum. They shape their lips together again and again in a series of placid, unhurried kisses.

_You are saved._

Will presses the tip of his tongue to the soft, underside of Hannibal’s lip just before the shade of pink darkens. He flicks lightly, releasing Hannibal’s lip in the same instant that Hannibal’s tongue tracks the tip of Will’s. They lose a moan somewhere in between the slide of their tongues as their opened mouths slot perfectly together. Hannibal combs lightly through Will’s hair with one strong hand. His thumb plays at Will’s earlobe, smiling blissfully around the harsh sound he draws out of Will when he teases the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

_You saved my life._

Hannibal tips his chin up just enough to break the kiss, and Will starts to follow until he sees Hannibal’s slack jaw and the fingers that have gone still and loose in at the base of his skull. Will bites back his smile and sets Hannibal’s hand back on the bed. Will leaves a chaste, feather-light kiss on his parted, supple lips and leans back in his chair, more pleased than he should let himself feel.

When Hannibal sobers up they’ll have a nice long discussion about why it was wrong for Will to take advantage of him in his current state. He should have considered the consequences before he kissed Hannibal, but he hadn’t really known he _wanted_ to kiss Hannibal until he had kissed Hannibal. Neither of them had really been in tip-top shape to be making big decisions, to be perfectly honest.

If Hannibal wakes up not liking the fact that Will kissed him and with gusto to spare, they can chalk it up to adrenaline and relief and near-death experiences and never speak of it again. Will would love, very much, if that weren’t the case, but he wouldn’t try to force the issue either if things didn’t happen that way. He’s confident Hannibal would never let anyone force him into anything, and that reality steadies him and eradicates the panic.

Hannibal can make of Will’s kiss whatever he damn well wants. Hannibal always does.

He reads the newest text from Jack when his phone buzzes three times in his pocket: _C Mahoney apprehended by local police. Bringing him in for questioning._

Will squints at the photo Jack sent of Mahoney’s car T-boned in the middle of an intersection. Apparently driving with a bullet lodged in his thigh wasn’t the most advisable course of action. If anyone else was hurt in Mahoney’s reckless escape, Jack doesn’t inform him. He spares no other thought to the possibility and folds his arms on the edge of Hannibal’s bed and drifts in and out of dozing.

He hears some shuffling; probably the nurses come and go around him, keeping track of Hannibal’s readings and whatnot. He dreams sporadically, reimagines the scene from Mahoney’s kitchen but slower as if his memories have been lathered in viscous honey.

In his dream, Mahoney’s kitchen is the Hobbs’ kitchen and he relives the murder of Abigail’s father as he tried one last time to kill her. As the images slow and skip and warp in his mind, he finds himself in Abigail’s place and Hannibal in her father’s place. Instead of attempting to slash his throat open, Hannibal is pushing him down onto the tile as he did to save him from a bullet that was meant for him. In his dream, a swarming mass of flies discharges a single shot that lodges permanently into the side of Hannibal’s occipital lobe just as he is ushering Will to safety.

In his dream, Hannibal is dead and when Will shakes him he doesn’t move, smile, or breathe. In his dream, the flies scatter in a violent explosion of maroon blood and black feathers and ashes that stifle his throat.

He jerks awake with something warm and solid in his hand. There are purposeful fingers in his hair, kneading and soothing at his scalp. Stiff, sore, and exhausted for various reasons, Will carefully hoists himself into something more closely resembling an upright position to meet Hannibal’s eyes. He releases his grip on Hannibal’s uninjured arm and leans both elbows on the bed. He keeps his upper body diagonal to the bed so Hannibal won’t have to remove his hand from Will’s hair any time soon.

Will decides, quite abruptly, not to beat around the bush.

“I’m sorry I kissed you last night.”

“Are you?”

An amused quirk twitches at Hannibal’s lips, looking no less ripe to the touch than they did after Will kissed him. He blames a lot of his impulsivity on that obvious, ridiculous pout. The fingers in his hair scratch lightly down the curve of his mastoid process.

“No.”

Those soft lips stretch into a slow, sated smile, pushing Will’s belly into a warm lurching dizziness. Hannibal hums.

“Good.”

Will’s breath catches at the slight shift in the pressure at the back of his head. He pushes up on his elbows and meets Hannibal halfway for another long, burning kiss that just _promises_ to become much, much more in time.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and lyrics from Fiona Apple.


End file.
